A few months before the historic March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, Dr Martin Luther King, Jr wrote in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail: “We know from painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.”

This week, thousands of courageous workers at a Nissan plant in Canton, Mississippi, are doing just that. They are voting for the right to join a union, the right to make a living wage and the right to job security and pensions. And they are doing so by connecting workers’ rights with civil rights, as the plant’s workforce is over 80% African American.

But Nissan, like other large corporations, is doing everything it can to stop these workers from forming a union. In the lead up to the vote, Nissan management has been deluging employees with anti-union literature and is threatening to close the plant if a majority of its workers vote to establish a union.

Supervisors have called workers off assembly lines for one-on-one interrogations. Anti-union videos are being run on a constant loop in employee break rooms. Groups of workers have been called into “roundtable” meetings to hear management disparage the United Auto Workers (UAW). Nissan has been saturating local TV and radio with anti-union propaganda.

This could go down as one of the most vicious, and illegal, anti-union crusades in decades. Workers should never have to endure this type of threatening campaign or walk through a minefield just to vote for a union.

The truth is Nissan is an all-too-familiar story of how greedy corporations divide and conquer working people.

800-647-726
I called Nissan North America consumer relations – chose one of the last options – to speak to a person and left my name, address and phone number and expressed my views in support of the workers who should be allowed to join a union.
After I spoke a few words I was put on hold and the person came back and said they wanted to document my comment and asked for the contact info.
I also pointed out that Henry Ford knew enough to pay his workers enough money so they could afford one of his cars…

The senator is asking supporters to sign on to the proposal as “citizen co-sponsors” via a digital ad campaign. In an article by the Guardian, Sanders’s team described the operation as an effort to dispel myths about government-run healthcare, which is offered to the general populations of almost every western country and number of developing nations.

“Bottom line is: if other countries around the world are providing quality care to all their people, we can do the same,” Sanders told NPR on Tuesday. “The American people are familiar with Medicare. By and large it’s quite a popular program. But it starts now when you are 65 years of age…It should be available for every single person in this country.”

A longtime proponent of Medicare for All, Sanders has laid out his plan for the system on his website, noting that it would be paid for with taxes on capital gains, dividends and estates of the wealthiest Americans, as well as with savings that would be gained by eliminating healthcare tax expenditures.

“We outspend all other countries on the planet and our medical spending continues to grow faster than the rate of inflation,” Sanders’s website says. “Creating a single, public insurance system will go a long way towards getting healthcare spending under control.”

Ahead of the ad campaign, Sanders sent an email to his supporters asking for ideas regarding how to implement a Medicare for All plan, counter right-wing attacks on government-run healthcare, and bring all Americans into the fight for healthcare access. Within 24 hours, Sanders had raised $65,000 and received 19,000 responses.

The positive response follows months of signs that Americans and their lawmakers are embracing Medicare for All. The Pew Research Center found in June that 33 percent of citizens supported government-funded healthcare for all Americans, up five points since January and 12 points since 2014. Fifty-two percent of Democrats supported the plan.

Baby Boomers and other older Americans are no longer the majority of voters in U.S. presidential elections.

Millennials and Generation Xers cast 69.6 million votes in the 2016 general election, a slight majority of the 137.5 million total votes cast, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of Census Bureau data. Meanwhile, Boomers and older voters represented fewer than half of all votes for the first time in decades. The shift has occurred as Millennials accounted for a growing share of the electorate

A medicare for all bill, HR676, was introduced in Congress back in January, and despite getting over forty co-sponsors in the House, the legislation has hardly made a ripple in terms of serious national attention.
Bernie Sanders will be unveiling similar legislation in the Senate in the near future, but it’s unclear just how much headway that will make either.

I’ve been saying for months now that Democrats need to make a single payer healthcare system part of their platform now. Obviously, with Republicans controlling the House, Senate and White House, such legislation isn’t going to pass anytime soon. But that’s no reason not to fight for it anyway, and be unequivocal about moving towards a single payer system as soon as possible.

A few Democratic candidates running in the 2018 midterm elections are doing just that.

Randy Bryce, an ironworker in Wisconsin attempting to unseat Paul Ryan, has been vocal early on about his support for a medicare for all health care system. His first campaign video went viral and it was was all about health care.

The you have Amy Vilela, a candidate who’s primarying a Democrat in Nevada because he didn’t sign onto medicare for all. Vilela actually tragically lost her 22-year-old daughter a few years ago, alleging that hospital staff didn’t treat her daughter’s blood clot because she didn’t have insurance.

he man seeking Bernie Sanders’ U.S. Senate seat says his former campaign manager played a “dirty trick” by announcing the end of the campaign Tuesday in a Twitter post.

“I let my campaign manager go, and I think it was just his little way of trying to stick it to me for that,” said Jon Svitavsky of Bridport, a 2018 Democratic candidate for the seat currently held by Sen. Sanders, I-Vt. Svitavsky said he is still in the race and seeking a new campaign manager.

The former campaign manager, David Moore of North Carolina, acknowledged in an interview that his group, Organizing for Democrats, had managed the Svitavsky campaign Twitter account.

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Moore and Svitavsky offered starkly different accounts of the feud that led to their separation.

Svitavsky said he disagreed with Moore’s “nasty” attacks against Sanders on the campaign Twitter account.

“I just want to be of high integrity, I don’t want to just be an attack dog,” Svitavsky said, adding later, “His behavior had become really unacceptable to me.”

It’s now up to workers at Nissan’s Mississippi assembly plant to decide if they will be represented by the United Auto Workers union.

Voting began inside the plant at 2 a.m. Thursday in the election conducted by the National Labor Relations Board. Ballots can be cast until 7 p.m. Friday.

On one side are workers who say the 3,700 Nissan Motor Co. assembly and maintenance workers need a union to give them a voice in their workplace, to protect against arbitrary treatment, and to bargain for better benefits and pay.

Opposing them are other Nissan employees who reject the idea of a union speaking for them. They warn that the UAW would be an economic albatross burdening an employer who pays them well.

Outside analysts assume the union is an underdog, since the UAW has never fully organized a foreign-owned auto plant in the southern United States. But no one knows for sure.

Four Democratic candidates for governor of Michigan are headed here for a debate Aug. 12 at the University of Michigan-Flint.

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Candidates who are set to participate are Bill Cobbs, former global vice president of Xerox; Abdul El-Sayed, former director of the Detroit Department of Health and Wellness Promotion; Shri Thanedar, Indian-born entrepreneur and author of “American Dream;” and Gretchen Whitmer, former minority leader of the Michigan Senate.

Recently, Nina Turner, the president of the progressive organization Our Revolution, and #AllofUs, called out the new platform for its lack of racial justice policies. Turner’s groups were among those that released the People’s Platform, a suite of congressional bills that address a range of issues including Medicare for all, criminal justice, immigrant rights, and taxing Wall Street. In addition, they delivered 100,000 signatures of support for the People’s Platform to the Democratic National Committee.

The People’s Platform speaks directly to the needs of the base of the party. By articulating policies that congressional Democrats should enact if they win a House majority in 2018, the People’s Platform creates a positive, inclusive, and practical vision for the future. This initiative reveals what is possible for the party. Democrats need to answer the question of how race and identity fit into their platform if they want to bring voters of color back to the fold for next year’s elections.

Bryce, a Democrat campaigning for the congressional seat held by House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., received the backing of a leading pro-choice advocacy group because of his strong commitment to stand up for women and families.

The statement from NARAL said Bryce’s made clear that protecting and expanding women’s access to reproductive health care including abortion is a top priority for him.

As a veteran, iron worker, father and cancer survivor, few people have a better understanding of the issues hardworking Americans​ face today than Randy Bryce, the statement said.

“For too long Speaker Ryan has cared more about his donors in Washington D.C. than he has the women and families of southeast Wisconsin,” said NARAL president Ilyse Hogue. “Now, arm in arm with Donald Trump, he carries out cruel and careless attempts to destroy our healthcare and still has no plan to make our lives better. But Randy has a plan to counter the GOP’s out-of-touch fringe agenda. The momentum Randy is building with his progressive and pro-choice message is proof that people are ready for new leadership.”

She continued, “NARAL is proud to endorse Randy Bryce and we look forward to working together to take back the House and stand up for the reproductive freedom of all Americans.”

BY
JENNIFER GERSON UFFALUSSY
JANUARY 5, 2016 8:25 AM
This morning, NARAL Pro-Choice America PAC announced their endorsement of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for President of the United States.
The timing of the endorsement is particularly striking, with the Iowa caucuses—the first primary-type event to occur nationwide for the 2016 Presidential election—is now less than one month out. Real Clear Politics has Clinton leading her main opponent for the nomination, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, by 12.8 points in Iowa, 49.8 to 37 percent in the state. (The third contender for the nomination, former Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley, is currently standing at an average of 6 percent in Iowa.)

Advocates for marijuana legalization and criminal justice are lauding a bill Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) introduced on Tuesday to end federal prohibition of pot and offer financial assistance to communities devastated by the War on Drugs.

“The question is no longer ‘should we legalize marijuana?’; it is ‘how do we legalize marijuana?'” said Queen Adesuyi, a policy associate at the Drug Policy Alliance. “We must do so in a way that recognizes that the people who suffered most under prohibition are the same people who should benefit most under legalization.”

“From disparate marijuana-related arrests and incarceration rates to deportations and justifications for police brutality—the War on Drugs has had disparate harm on low-income communities and communities of color. It’s time to rectify that,” Adesuyi added.

It’s long been clear that if we want to avoid catastrophic climate disruption on a scale that threatens human civilization, we need to leave vast amounts of fossil fuels in the ground. Environmental writer Bill McKibben pointed out the math in a crucial 2012 article for Rolling Stone: To avoid disaster, 80 percent of the carbon already discovered by private and state-owned energy companies has to be left alone—to be treated as useless rock, not precious resources.

The problem is, the energy companies are some of the richest, most powerful entities on Earth. Corporations are designed to act like organisms with a single goal, maximizing profits. And the fossil fuel industry’s future profits—roughly 80 percent of them—depend on extracting that carbon and burning it, climate and civilization be damned. They have been using and will continue to use their vast influence to thwart any effort to avert that disaster.

Does humanity have the collective power to tell the current owners of carbon deposits that they no longer own them—that they don’t have the right to take them out of the ground and sell them as fuel? That’s the $640 trillion question. Doing so is essential to our future as a species—but a massive transfer of wealth of that kind isn’t like a revolution, it is a revolution, and a revolution on a scale history hasn’t seen before.

But climate isn’t the only crisis that requires a revolution. Healthcare provided by for-profit corporations inevitably tends towards more than we can afford to pay, as the demand for life-or-death products is infinite. Solving the problem of paying for medical care means telling medical corporations that they can no longer expect the hyper-profits that their market value is based on expecting.

And it’s increasingly evident that an entire sector of the healthcare industry—the purveyors of for-profit health insurance—needs to be eliminated in order to bring health costs under control. The insurance industry, though, has a special power in our economy: As its business model involves taking money from people and investing it, virtually every corporation on the stock exchange counts insurance companies among its owners. So taking on the insurance business, which is necessary to make healthcare affordable, means taking on all business. In other words, it means a revolution.

The Committee to Protect Journalists and the Freedom of the Press Foundation are among more than 20 groups partnering to introduce a new website which tracks threats to press freedom in the United States.

The U.S. Press Freedom Tracker launched Wednesday to gather data on arrests of journalists, physical attacks on reporters, equipment searches and seizures, prosecutions of the legal spreading of information (recently denounced as “leaks” by the Trump administration), and other threats to the free press.

So far in 2017, the site has tracked 19 arrests of journalists; 12 equipment searches and seizures; 11 physical attacks; and four cases of journalists who were detained, questioned, or denied entry at borders.

“With the Trump administration ramping up its war on journalism, this initiative could not come at a more important time,” Trevor Timm, executive director of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, said. “We hope it will be vital to highlighting the threats to press freedom in the U.S. and the important work journalists do to hold the government accountable.”

In an interview with ABC News, the new website’s managing editor, Peter Sterne, noted that American concerns over press freedom have historically been focused on other countries. “The U.S. is often seen as a beacon of press freedom in the world,” he said. “When freedom of the press in the U.S. is weakened, that has an effect around the world where other countries feel more emboldened to crack down on their own journalists.”

After seven months of polling and soul-searching, the Democratic leadership has unveiled its program for moving forward past the debacle of 2016.

In a New York Times op-ed on 24 July, the Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer of New York, placed the blame for Hillary Clinton’s loss in the electoral college on the Democrats: they had been too timid and vague in articulating a vision for the country. But that, he promised, was changing. The Democrats had devised a program – a Better Deal for the American Worker – to offer to the American people. That deal had three legs: better pay, lower expenses, and investments in programs that would give workers tools to compete in the21st-century economy.

Critics immediately pointed out that these policy proposals were hardly new for the Democrats, who have called for similar programs in the past, and that calling their plan a “better deal” presumed that the current deal was good.

And therein lies the rub. The shocking rise of Donald Trump on the right and Bernie Sanders on the left signaled that Americans hate the current deal. While Trump and Sanders each had distinctive supporters, both spoke to the reality that since 1980, the political policies of neoliberalism have concentrated wealth in the pockets of a tiny elite.

Yup. These Dem lines started with Clinton. Talking in rural counties about it would be hard, but the government would retrain everyone and glorious globalization would lift all boats. Same ol’ same ol’.

Sam Clovis, who has been nominated by Donald Trump to be the department of agriculture’s top scientist, previously ran a blog where he called progressives “race traders and race ‘traitors’” and likened former president Barack Obama to a “communist” and a “dictator”.

Who is going to clean up Peru’s northern Amazon after decades of companies spilling oil and dumping billions of barrels of toxic production waters? Certainly not US company Occidental which ran the biggest concession, Lot 1-AB, until 2000, nor, it would seem, Petroperu, which ran the other major concession, Lot 8, until 1996 and operates the rusty, leaking North Peruvian Pipeline to this day.

Nor Pluspetrol, a company founded in Argentina and now registered in the Netherlands which took over both Lot 1-AB and Lot 8, if its actions to date are anything to go by. Nor the China National Petroleum Corporation, which bought 45% stakes in both concessions in 2003. Nor the subsidiary of a Canadian company now called Frontera Energy which, in 2015, when Lot 1-AB’s name was effectively changed to Lot 192, bought 100% of operations in a two year temporary contract.

The impacts on the Achuar, Kichwa, Kukama, Quechua and Urarina indigenous peoples living in this region have been appalling: contaminated rivers, streams, lakes, lagoons, soils, gardens, game, fish, and all manner of related health problems, including epidemics, miscarriages, skin diseases, diarrhoea and deaths, according to reports. Rights have been trampled over and ignored, requests for land title blocked, protest criminalised, communities divided, forest and spiritual sites destroyed, 1,000s of outsiders brought in as labourers, confidence in government eroded, and economic dependency fostered. Enter alcoholism, prostitution, HIV-AIDS, suicide and often, when members of communities have found employment with the companies, poor working conditions.

The pipeline that TransCanada wants to build is short, 3.5 miles, cutting through the narrowest part of Maryland. It would duck briefly under the Potomac River at this 1,500-person town, bringing what business leaders say is much-needed natural gas to the eastern panhandle of West Virginia.

But environmentalists say that brief stretch could jeopardize the water supply for about 6 million people, including most of the Washington-metropolitan area.

That’s why dozens of protesters have gathered each weekend this summer at various points along the upper Potomac, part of a growing national movement that opposes both oil and natural gas pipelines and wants businesses and governments to embrace green energy instead.

Inspired by the Dakota Access oil pipeline protest at Standing Rock, N.D., and the broad wave of demonstrations that has energized the left since President Trump’s inauguration, the protesters hope to convince Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) and his energy secretary to stop the pipeline, which got an enthusiastic green light from West Virginia.

“It’s got me worried,” said Andy Billotti, 53, who wore a T-shirt from April’s Peoples Climate March in Washington as he erected his tent at the Paw Paw Tunnel Campground near Oldtown, Md., for one recent protest. “If something were to happen, that fracked poison would come down the river . . . right into our wells.”

What exactly is TransCanada doing in Washington, D.C. besides bribing politicians? There are pipelines all over the place that need either repairing and/or replacing. What’s their foreign-owned buzz about buying a few? A lot of people don’t realize that DC is a seaport city. It was built in a swampy, marshland/flood plane area cos of its location between the original states, and its natural routes to the Atlantic Ocean. If the Potomac gets hit with a fracking spill, all bets are off. Just ask Oklahoma whose citizens are going haywire from enduring years of oil patch damage. The MD and VA suburbs which surround DC are some of the most heavily populated ones in the country. I doubt TransCanada will win this one. Good! LD: I commented on C99‘s post about the Markos slam by Jimmy Dore. Told them that TPW had just posted about it, too. 🙂 🙂 Got a truckload of rec’s, all very favorable and complimentary especially the well-deserved praise for you and the BNR. LOL. T and R to the usual suspects!! Me thinks we TPWers are starting to get ‘famous’ in the cyber world.

Conservation groups have filed an administrative protest challenging the U.S. Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) plan for a September auction of three parcels in Ohio’s only national forest for oil and gas leasing. The parcels are adjacent to the Rover Pipeline.

The protest, filed Monday, targets the BLM’s failure to adequately analyze the impacts of fracking and pipelines on watersheds, forests and endangered species and its decision to open portions of the Wayne National Forest to fracking. Construction of the Rover Pipeline, which could transport fracked gas from the Wayne, has been halted because of spills and numerous safety and environmental violations.

“We’re protesting this dangerous fracking plan because drinking water safety and public lands should come before corporate profits,” said Taylor McKinnon with the Center for Biological Diversity. “The Ohio and Little Muskingum rivers provide precious water to millions of people in Ohio and downstream states. Pollution from fracking and faulty pipelines would be disastrous for the people who depend on this water.”

loudy water with an oily film poured out of a hose at Scavello’s Car Care in Exton, Pennsylvania, where Jeremy Garrison had to turn away at least three customers while he waited for his water supply to clear up.
“This is our livelihood,” he said. “We need clean water to sustain our business.”

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eanwhile, Chester County mother Rebecca Britton, who lives just 400 feet from Mariner East 2, said her children are asking tough questions she can’t answer: “Mommy, what’s in that pipeline” and “Mommy, are you going to keep us safe?”

“I just really care deeply about our community, our schools and our children, our collective futures,” she said. “My children are 7 and 4 [years old] and all I tell them is that mommy loves [them] very much and I’m going to fight every day to make sure our community is safe.”

In a different part of Chester County, other residents have complained about a contaminated well water that became muddy with bentonite clay after construction started on the pipeline, which spans 17 counties and 350 miles through Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Ohio.

Environmental activists and union workers squared off Wednesday night for one of their last opportunities to weigh in on a proposed 7.8-mile pipeline that would feed gas to a $900 million power plant being built in Wawayanda.

More than 200 people filled the Paramount Theatre Wednesday evening for a public comment session held by the state Department of Environmental Conservation. The session, where more than 80 signed up to speak, was to gather comments on Millennium Pipeline Company’s 16-inch-in-diameter Valley Lateral Project, a $57.3 million pipeline that would travel northeast from Westtown to the $900 million Competitive Power Ventures’ Valley Energy Center, which is under construction on Route 6 in Wawayanda.

At the Paramount, activists often talked about the pipeline interchangeably with the CPV plant, fracking and the impacts of pollution and greenhouse gases. Protestors, some from New York City and others local, arrived early and waved signs that read “Toxic” and “Governor Cuomo Stop CPV No Fracked Gas.” Their concerns ranged from health impact, to climate change and the safety of the plant.

Pramilla Malick, who leads the group Protect Orange County, wore a red sash that said “Stop CPV” and aimed her comments at the governor’s office.

“We want Governor Cuomo to do the right thing and pull the plug on this project,” Malick said.

Local organizations dedicated to opposing the Mountaineer Gas pipeline appeared before the Morgan County Commission on Wednesday where commissioners said the pipeline would benefit the local economy if built.

Morgan County property owner Patricia Kesecker addressed the three-member panel, and expressed her feelings of helplessness during a recent court case where Mountaineer sued her family for eminent domain rights to the land. Kesecker said she felt like a sheep led to slaughter after Circuit Court Judge Laura Faircloth ruled in favor of Mountaineer – granting rights to the 75-foot wide easement requested by the gas company.

“They robbed us at our age, and they robbed our children and grandchildren of the blood, sweat and tears we’ve put in the land,” Kesecker said. “We need to change the eminent domain culture in West Virginia.”

Not much to this story that’s not in the headline (25 barrels spilled)… but this isn’t comforting:

Los Angeles County Fire Department spokesman Gustavo Medina said crews were dispatched to the 1500 block of Spring Street at 4:03 p.m. The spill has since been contained, he said, and a pump truck is on scene cleaning it up.

On the chaotic day the Trump administration’s travel ban went into effect, high-level Homeland Security officials directed their staff at airports around the country to stiff-arm members of Congress and treat lawyers with deep suspicion.

Members of Congress say they’re shocked by the orders, uncovered in documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request from The Daily Beast and The James Madison Project, both of which were represented by the law office of Mark S. Zaid.

“I’m extremely troubled that CBP [Customs and Border Protection] employees would be instructed by superiors to ignore Congressional representatives trying to do their job, especially under such circumstances,” said Sen. Cory Booker, a New Jersey Democrat. “We suspected as much at the time, but it’s jarring to see it in black and white. I’ll be seeking more information from CBP on this matter.”

A CBP official wrote in an email on Jan. 28 that the agency’s employees were forbidden from speaking to members of Congress.

A 30-year U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) senior official left federal service Tuesday convinced that her agency is being steered in a disastrously wrong direction, according to her farewell message posted by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). She is an eyewitness to the wreckage wreaked by Administrator Scott Pruitt and his cadre of political appointees.

Elizabeth “Betsy” Southerland has a Ph.D. in environmental science and engineering and has worked in both the private sector and state government. At EPA, she served in both the water and Superfund programs as a senior executive, managing first as a division director in both programs and then as the director of the Office of Science and Technology in the Office of Water. In 2015, she received the Distinguished Presidential Rank Award.

Her farewell message to her colleagues warned that Pruitt:

•Has “repeals of 30 rules under consideration,” most of which aim at “industry deregulation” of an array of toxic substances and practices that can threaten human health;
•Seeks “abandonment of the polluter pays principal that underlies all environmental statutes”; and
•Is pursuing policies that promise to repeat human health and environmental catastrophes, such as Flint, Michigan’s drinking water crisis.

As Bernie Sanders considers another White House bid, advisers and confidants are urging him to spend more time in the South in an effort to woo black voters.

While Sanders won over many white working class and millennial voters in his 2016 campaign, he failed to secure black voters — and particularly support from older black women — when he challenged Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination.

“There’s a narrative that follows him from the campaign that he doesn’t care about the South,” said Symone Sanders, who served as the senator’s spokesperson during the campaign. “He needs to physically show up so people feel differently.”

Sanders appeared at the NAACP national convention in Baltimore late last month, where he criticized the Senate health care bill, which ultimately failed.

He also stopped in states like Kentucky and West Virginia for rallies slamming Republicans on the issue.

Symone Sanders (born December 10, 1989) is an American who served as national press secretary for Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, who lost the Democratic primary to Hillary Rodham Clinton. She left the campaign in late June 2016 abruptly but said she was not let go and that leaving the campaign was her decision.[1] She was 26 years old at the time. She is currently a Democratic strategist and political commentator on CNN.[2]

Republican governors are working with the Trump administration to do something Congress couldn’t accomplish: fundamentally alter their state Medicaid programs.

At least six states with GOP governors— Arkansas, Kentucky, Arizona, Maine, Wisconsin and Indiana — have already drafted plans meant to introduce new rules people would have to meet to be eligible for Medicaid, which provides healthcare to low-income Americans and those with certain disabilities.

Some want to add work requirements or introduce drug testing for recipients. Others want to raise premium prices.

The Trump administration has to approve the plans. Some approvals could come in weeks.

Critics say the proposed changes will leave fewer people on Medicaid and hurt the poor and vulnerable.